Radio review: from Radio 1Xtra to The Archers

There's not much of a tradition of nostalgia in black music. That's why Radio 1Xtra is the most vital music station: great pop music should play in a permanent present tense. With Radio 1Xtra you're rarely running the risk of its ribbon of big shouts, air-cleaving throbs, ampersand-connected duos, and trails shot through with that choral effect indicating incoming signals from Planet Lairy being interrupted by an effete acoustic version of some recent hit recorded live to get round needletime agreements.

Even here they're not above glancing over their shoulders, though the habit doesn't come easily. Radio 1Xtra presenters, who talk about "going New York", "going Napa" and even "going films", will refer to anything from the thirty years war to the hits of Michelle Gayle as "old skool". Marvin Gaye was their "ledge of the week" recently, and you got the impression that most of what they knew about him they got from Wikipedia.

That doesn't matter. There's enough genuflecting to the past on BBC radio, which is why playlists have their arteries clogged with duty plays. Even Chris Evans (weekdays, 6.30am, R2) seemed to be saying that the other day when he very nearly wondered out loud how long they were going to be persevering with David Bowie's follow-up single The Stars (Are Out Tonight). In his Radio 1 days he would have taken it off. In his GLR days he would have flung it across the studio. He's tamer now, and you can't throw noughts and ones.

I like Charlie Sloth (weekdays, 4pm, Radio 1Xtra) because he's one of the few DJs young enough to correct people who spread rumours that he's even younger, and he's got that Evans quality of warmth with a side order of madness. His billing describes him as "the best-looking fat guy in the universe". He can get away with this because he isn't either. If the chief glory of spoken English is its constantly moderating tone of voice, Sloth is keeping alive one of our great oral traditions. On occasions – as he slips from Lethal Bizzle to Major Lazer & FS Green, and on through Drake even unto Iggy Azalea – he sounds as if he's channelling the kind of conversational stream you might be exposed to on the top of any nightbus in London.

At the same time, Sean Rafferty is presenting In Tune (weekdays, 4.30pm, R3) from Salford. When you consider how much radio output is taken up by people talking about music, it's amazing how few people can do it. Rafferty can: he's a smooth, pally interviewer who wears his erudition lightly, flits across genres with easy familiarity, and doesn't sound as if he's reading from a script. It will be a while before Charlotte Green (Sunday, 3pm, Classic FM), formerly of Radio 4, will be quite as much at ease with her Great Composers series but she's a good signing for the station.

By the time you read this, Iftikar may be embarked on a fully fledged affair with Elizabeth Pargetter, whose husband, you will recall, was tossed off the roof of Lower Loxley by the retiring editor of The Archers (weekdays, 7pm, R4). (It's always the men who come to sticky ends, please note.) This may indicate that the writers are comfortable enough with having an Asian male in the cast that they are ready to issue him with the rest of a personality. The world of Ambridge turns so quickly these days that if you leave it until late in the week they could well be married.